Do mixed race Taiwanese kids speak better English?

Do you have like a secret language with your wife, that the kids won't understand? I have to spell things out, so yeah, let's go upstairs for some H-O-M-E-W-O-R-K. Hello everybody, welcome back to the channel. My name is Alan, this is My Life in Taiwan, and as usual, another slightly different video for the channel this week, because I'm here in the beautiful countryside of Puli, at this stunning little simple farm. Details in the description down below. I'm here enjoying a weekend with my friends, just relaxing, getting a bit of fresh countryside air, and while we were standing around chatting, I asked them if they would mind being in one of my videos, because interestingly, all three of my friends that are here are British guys, been here a long time, married to Taiwanese wives, and have had half-Taiwanese, half-British kids. Therefore, I came up with a question for them. I want to know what they think of their kids' English level, compared to the English level of the students that they teach, and whether or not being a mixed-race British-Taiwanese kid gives them an advantage in their English or Chinese abilities over the students that they teach here in their schools in Taiwan. So I think that's enough from me, time to get over to my three friends, who are going to talk a little bit about it. I'm going to ask them a few questions, and see if we can make some kind of summary at the end of the video. And now I've been working in several high schools for the last 10 years. I'm an English teacher, of course, and I currently own an English school in Jianghua City. I have two children. Charlie is 15, Anna is 10. I've been married for 16 years. Two sons, Stanley and Herbie. Stanley's 16, and Herbie is 10. Nearly 11, sorry. Two children, Belle, who is two and a half, and Holly, who is five. And which one's your favourite? It depends which day of the week it is. Not as good as it should be. I can do stuff when I need to do stuff, get things sorted out. But if someone tries to talk to me about anything of random importance, I'm lost. My Chinese is pretty fluent. I did a master's degree in translation studies, so I can communicate well in Chinese, but I try not to use it with my children. So why do you choose not to speak Chinese with the kids? I want them to be able to speak English, and obviously going to school in a Chinese environment, it's important that they have the English environment at home. Dan's better than me. Jeremy's probably better than me. I'm okay. I can get by. I can have a basic conversation with people. Do you think it's ever the case where your kids must speak Chinese behind you, like when you're there, so you can't understand? I've never caught them doing that, but that's not to say they've never done it. So Stanley's going into grade 11, which is the second grade of senior high school. He goes to a vocational high school, so he doesn't follow the kind of regular curriculum, and he focuses more on international trade. That's the name of his department. Holly goes to kindergarten. Belle doesn't yet. Herbie's going into grade 5, elementary school, and yeah, it's just a regular elementary school. Oh, they have English class, yeah, but I mean, it's always been... they're learning stuff that's so far below them in English class that's pointless. They speak both. They're bilingual, trilingual if you count Taiwanese as well. Both of them were looked after by the grandparents when they were younger, and we specifically asked the grandparents to speak only Taiwanese with them. So, well, naturally it sort of developed. I thought at first, oh great, it's a perfect chance. I'll learn Chinese with the kids, right? And then that just never transpired. I realized pretty quickly that if I wanted them to learn English, I need to speak English to them all the time. No, I didn't really want to have any rules about it. If I'm at home, then generally we all speak English. If my wife's with the children alone, then she'll speak Chinese to them. And yeah, even Belle, my two-year-old, what did she say to me the other day? She said, Daddy, Daddy, to mummy I can speak Chinese, and to you I can speak English. So she knows how to use them and when. It's a different, no, in comparison, it's a different world. Well, there's no comparison. Her English far outweighs even the best student. They've got that native speaker English that you just can't get unless you've been submerged in an English environment. Some parents think that if they only send their child to like a bushy band, even just five days a week, they might think they should be fluent, but they're still thinking of it as a subject. And the kids, to become fluent, they need to realize it's not a subject, it's a language, it's a form of communication. In fact, me and my wife were discussing this on the way here, and it's even before birth they're hearing English sounds. You know, in utero, they're listening to those sounds. And then from the moment they're born, they're exposed to English. And my wife was making the point, well, we've got a class at our school, they come two hours a day, eight hours a week. And that's quite a lot, but it's nothing compared to what my children have at home with me, weekends, evenings. So incomparable, I would say. Well, it takes a lot of time and effort on the parents because the parents need to speak English at home with their kids. I guess if you had a foreign speaking nanny from birth, maybe that would have that effect. A lot of the kind of more intensive bilingual schools do a very good job of getting their students very, very fluent in English. But I still don't think it's quite that native speaker level. And then I guess it takes money as well, because obviously parents are busy, they're working. They will need to send them to, you know, maybe international schools. And I think if you go down that path, I think they would be as fluent as a native. And do you think there's any other way that Taiwanese kids can get to that level of English other than having a foreign or British parent? If their parents are both fluent in English and they're Taiwanese, then yes, they could. Because the parents could just speak English to them at home all the time. So yeah, I suppose in theory, but their parents would have to be fluent. But OK, let's say they're not. Is there a way to pay for that level of service? No. Well, yeah, if you pay for someone to look after your kid eight hours a day, 12 hours a day, but they still wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't reach that level. So Herbie, you've got a message for the people of Taiwan, right? Yep. What's the message? Subscribe Alan and then watch Alan's channel and then learn a lot of English. Click like and then open the little bell to know Alan's new video coming up. Perfect. Scripted beautifully. OK, so there you have it. There's my friend's opinions on how their own children's English compares to that of the students that they teach. And just to make a little bit of a summary, it seems to me that in those guys opinions, there's almost no way to get your kids English as fluent as a native speaking English kid without having a huge native speaking influence on the kids, whether that's a nanny that you pay 12 hours a day or using your own fluent English 24 hours a day around your kids in the house. It seems that's the only way to get that native speaking English instilled into your kids. And I also want to just go back to a point that Jim made about it not being a school subject. English is not just a school subject. It's a language. It's a form of communication that develops slowly and naturally. Therefore, bushy bands and cram schools forcing English testing systems into the heads of the kids may be a great way to pass tests, but maybe not such a good way to become such a native English speaker. I'm going to wrap the video up here and say thank you so much for watching. Thanks of course to all of my Patreons for their support. You probably will have seen a few of their names pop up throughout this video. If you want to get your name in the corner of my video, then go check out my Patreon link in the description down below. Before I wrap the video up, just want to say a big thanks to Simon, Jim and Dan for taking part in the video. I think you'll agree they did such a good job. Absolute naturals on camera. So thanks guys. And I'm sure I'll be back interviewing you again in the future if this video does well. But time to say goodbye as for now. And as always, I'll see you next time in my life in Taiwan. Peace. Bye.